Westlake, Donald E - Sara and Jack 01

by Trust Me on This (v1. 1)

  There was no indication in the house, not in a cursory lookthrough; no notes on a pad by the phone, nothing like that. In his employee file back at the paper there’d be more information on Taggart, at the very least a listing of next of kin; surely there was a way she could get a look at that. Deciding to check into that tomorrow, Sara left the house by the kitchen door—pulling it shut but leaving it unlocked behind her, as it had been —walked around to the front, and found there a woman in running shoes, blue jeans, a faded apron, a cartoon T-shirt and dark sunglasses, who was leaning against the fender of the Peugeot, arms folded in a declaration of grim and implacable determination. “Hello,” Sara said, when it seemed certain the eyes hidden behind the sunglasses were focused on her.

  “Hello, yourself,” the woman said. “And where’s Jimmy Taggart?” She was probably about forty, stringy and bony as range cattle, and with a cigarette-and-whiskey hoarseness in her voice.

  “Well, I—” Sara said, nonplussed. “Who are you?”

  “The landlady,” the woman said. She continued to lean on the Peugeot, arms folded, making it clear Sara would not leave here until given permission. The woman said, “What are you, a daughter or something?”

  “That’s right,” Sara agreed. “Sara Taggart. How do you do?”

  “Pissed off, that’s how I do,” the woman said. “Carol Bridges is my name, and your father owes me two weeks rent, thirty dollars cash loan, and one hell of an explanation.”

  He was sleeping with this woman, Sara thought. It always astonished her to run across evidence that people more than a few years older than herself still engaged in sex. And still made a mess of it, too. “I really don’t know where, uh, Pop is,” she said, the hesitation caused by her realization at the last second that any child of Taggart’s would surely call him Pop rather than the Dad she’d been about to say. Hurrying on, she said, “He didn’t know I was coming, in fact I didn’t know myself until just, uh, I’m just driving through, just thought I’d take a chance, and, uh . . .” I’m just babbling, is what I’m just, she told herself. You do this for a living, you he to people seven hours a day at the Galaxy; get back into gear. So she clamped her mouth shut, having already said too much.

  The woman’s manner was suspicious, certainly, but it seemed a generic unfocused suspicion rather than one specifically aimed at Sara. Squinting behind her sunglasses, “Maybe you should give me your phone number,” she said. “In case I have to get in touch.”

  “In touch? For what?”

  “You want to pay the back rent,” the woman suggested, “bring us up to date, that’s okay, too. Otherwise, there’s gonna come a point when Jimmy’s stuff goes out, and I rent this place to somebody else.”

  “Oh, sure, of course,” Sara said, thinking there might be some advantage to having this link with Taggart’s last known address. “And you can give me your number, too.”

  “Sure.” The woman unfolded her arms, reached into her apron, and brought out a Holiday Inn memo pad and Sheraton Hotel pen. “I just live down the block here,” she said.

  And you’re keeping an eye on the house, Sara thought. She said, “I’ll only be around a couple of days, I’m actually working up in Charleston now, but I can give you the number where I’m staying.”

  “That’s fine.” Her expression behind the sunglasses was alert, but not dubious. She quickly wrote her own name and address and phone number, ripped that sheet off the memo pad, and handed it to Sara, who said, “My friend is Sara Joslyn, you could ask for either of us.” She reeled off her home number, which the woman wrote down, and then said, “If Da—Pop does come back, would you give me a call?”

  “Well, I’ll tell him to,” she said. “He’s your father.”

  “Yes, but you know how he is,” Sara said, smiling, trying to make them co-conspirators. “A little forgetful, a little flaky sometimes.”

  “That’s your father, all right,” the woman agreed, falling in with the conspiracy at once. “All right, I’ll call the minute I see him.”

  “Thanks a lot,” Sara said, and started around the Peugeot toward the driver’s side.

  The woman turned, facing Sara, no longer leaning on the car. “But,” she said. “If he doesn’t come back by this weekend, you be prepared on Sunday to come get his junk, or I’ll just dump it in the street. I got bills of my own, you know. I got to rent this place.”

  “Oh, I’m sure he’ll be back by then,” Sara said. “You know Pop.”

  Three

  Ever since his divorce, David Levin, special projects editor at Trend, The Magazine for the Way We Live This Instant, had lived in a fine little apartment on Bank Street in Greenwich Village, on a quiet block of small brick houses and slate sidewalks, all so yeastily authentic that movies were being shot there all the time, which was just about the only drawback the place had. That, and the fact that David was not himself living in one of the charming old nineteenth-century brick houses, but in one of the mid-twentieth-century postwar apartment buildings the old brick houses were being torn down for before the Landmarks Commission had come along. Still, when he looked out his window it was charm he saw; if the people who actually lived in the charming houses were .reduced to having his dull apartment building in their view that was just tough patooties.

  The mail was delivered on David’s block every morning between nine-thirty and ten, and his position at Trend was sufficiently powerful that he could more or less define his own hours, so he left the house every morning at about ten-fifteen, picked up his mail, took the 7th Ave IRT up to midtown, and was in the office before eleven, leaving plenty of time to deal with all phone messages and other problems before lunch.

  This particular Friday morning at the end of July, with the temperature and humidity both hovering around 86, and it’s still morning, for Christ’s sake, David was a bit later than his usual routine, which annoyed someone he didn’t even know yet, and which he would pay for in ways he would never understand. It was after ten-thirty before he took the elevator down from his top— sixth—floor apartment, keyed open his mailbox, withdrew his daily clump of mail, tossed in the wastebasket kept here in the lobby for that purpose all the throwaways and pitches and catalogs and CAR-RT SORTs that flesh is heir to, and stepped outside onto quiet Bank Street, looking at his remaining mail so intendy that he never saw her coming, on her bicycle, on the sidewalk, until a horrible squawling voice scrawked, “Watch it!” and she smashed into him hard enough to bounce him into the air and send him sprawling over the ranked masses of garbage cans lining the building front. (That was his punishment for being late. Originally, Ida Gavin had meant merely to bump him a little.)

  The garbage cans toppled, and dumped David to the quaint but nevertheless hard slate sidewalk. The bicycle, riderless and on its own, wobbled an amazingly long time before it fell on him. His mail was strewn far and wide. And some woman, sitting splay-legged on the sidewalk in front of him, was yelling, “Why don’t you watch where you’re going?”

  David stared at her in stunned surprise, battered and confused and totally unable to catch up. “What?” he managed. “But I was—”

  “How long you been in New York, you idiot?” the woman shrieked. What a loud and grating voice she had. “Are you a tourist?” she yelled.

  Like most New Yorkers, David was from Omaha, Nebraska, but was a real New Yorker now. (All together: “Oh, he’s from O-ma-ha Ne- bras-ka, But he’s a real New Yaw-kuh now.”) An accusation of being a tourist, therefore, struck at the very core of his most deeply hidden and most powerful insecurity. (All together: “Oh, Man-hattan’s in his vision, But Ne-bras-ka’s in his blood.”) Pushing the bicycle off himself so he could sit up and affect a bit of dignity, “Certainly not!” he cried. “I live here, that’s my buil—”

  “Are you looking up my skirt?”

  Astonished, David looked up her skirt. That color is called peach, isn’t it? “No!”

  “Well?” she yelled, sitting there on the slate, legs wide, hands on hips, voice
bouncing and echoing off the building fronts, “are you going to help me up or what? You knock me over, you sneak looks at—”

  “Never!” Embarrassed, frightened, in physical pain, wanting only for this horrible experience to be over, David struggled to his feet vaguely aware of surprise that all his parts seemed to be working. “I’ll be happy to help you,” he said, clambering through her bicycle, praying she wouldn’t yell anymore, “I certainly never intended to—”

  “Watch that!” she yelled, as he slid his hands under her armpits to help her up. “Don’t get grabby!”

  Oh, enough was enough. Releasing her, “Madam,” David said (a deadly insult, that), “you asked me to—”

  “Wait a minute,” she snapped, utterly selfabsorbed, twisting around. “You broke something, I know you did. You live here?”

  Bewildered again, thrown off balance yet again, “Yes,” he said, pointing vaguely upward, “on the top—

  “Okay, okay, carry me in,” she ordered, still as loud as ever, bossy, self-important, paying attention to nothing but herself, “carry me in, we’ll see what— Carry me in/”

  He reached for her again, not knowing what else to do, anything to shut her up, and she glared hot rage at him, yelling, “And don't get grabby!

  Recoiling, he said, “I don’t see how you expect me to—”

  But she never listened to a word he said, never. Staring upward, she said, “You’re on the top floor? All right, we’ll make it. There’s an elevator in there?”

  “You want me to carry you to my apartment?”

  “So,” she yelled, volume and outrage both reaching new peaks, “that’s the way it is! You knock me down, now you’ll just leave me here for muggers and rapists and white slav—”

  “All right, all right, all right,” he said, desperate to stop that awful voice, lunging forward again to help her to her feet. And this time he managed it without any more shrieks and squawks about his being grabby, even though his right hand did inadvertently touch her right breast for one second before he hurriedly shifted position.

  Take her inside, that was the plan, sit her down, get her away from the public street and calm her down, give her some coffee—or a drink, if she wanted one at this time of the morning— phone the office, get rid of her as soon as possible, wait a good five minutes—no, a good ten, maybe even fifteen minutes—after she left before essaying another departure, and still get to the office in plenty of time for lunch. (Lunch today, he remembered, was with their Mafia specialist reporter, a man always full of wonderfully unprintable stories. He was looking forward to it.)

  The woman leaned heavily on him, and they staggered to the building entrance, and were halfway through the outer door when she started screaming and shrieking again, yelling, “Don’t leave my bike! Now you’re gonna get my bike stole!”

  Take the dreadful harridan’s bicycle up to the apartment? Oh, anything, anything, just let this terrible sequence be over, let it be something to laugh about with Nick at lunch. “I’ll get your bike” he said, exasperated but flummoxed, and propped her against the inner door while he went out for the damn thing.

  What a way to start the day.

  What a way to start the day, Jack thought in no little satisfaction. Nine yesses from Massa and his red pencil, six stories from the mighty Jack Ingersoll team in this week’s brand-new Galaxy just arrived here on his desk, and an actual smile from Jacob Harsch this morning as the man murmured, “Well done,” in connection with the John Michael Mercer/Felicia Nelson meeting-and- romance story. Back in his squaricle, basking in unfamiliar contentment, Jack dictated a letter to the rapid and nearly cheerful Mary Kate: “I have reassured myself that there is no reporter by that name at the Weekly Galaxy. We of the Galaxy maintain the highest standards of journalistic integrity, and would never stoop to the . . .”

  Jack trailed off and looked up as Binx entered the squaricle, holding the new Galaxy in his hand and looking troubled. “Hello,” Binx said.

  “Morning, Binx,” Jack said. “Rough this morning.” Only three of Binx’s story ideas had survived Massa’s red pencil.

  “Well, that’s what happens,” Binx said, shrugging it off with uncharacteristic calm. Had Binx given in at last to his despair? It would certainly be restful for him.

  “Next week,” Jack promised him, and moved a hand vaguely.

  “Sure.” Binx held up the new Galaxy. “Jack,” he said, “this romance story about John Michael Mercer and Felicia Nelson.”

  “Isn’t it nice? The Harsch smiled upon me, it was quite an experience.”

  “It’s a real coup,” Binx agreed. “But when I was reading it, something kept bothering me.”

  “It went through the fact checkers like prune juice,” Jack assured him. “I’ve got a best friend on tape.”

  “Sure you do. But I was reading it, you know,” Binx said, holding the paper up, frowning at it as though he might read it again in Jack’s presence, to show him what the process looked like, “I was reading it, and I kept thinking, this is familiar, I know this story. And then I got it.”

  Jack gave him a careful look. “Yeah?”

  “It’s me” Binx said, staring at Jack wideeyed, like the steer in the stockyard just after it’s been given the stunning blow. “This is my meeting with Marcy,” Binx said, rattling the paper, “the mix-up with the car keys, and getting the street wrong, and all the rest of it. Jack, you sold the paper my life story!”

  Jack took a deep breath and faced Binx honestly and squarely. He was aware, in the periphery of his vision, of Mary Kate, not looking at him. “Binx,” he said, “ask yourself this question: Would my best friend do a tiling like that to me?”

  Binx nodded. “I have, Jack,” he said. “I have asked myself that question.” Poker-faced, he dropped the Galaxy on Jack’s desk and left the squaricle.

  Jack watched him go. He sighed. This too will pass. Turning to Mary Kate, he said, “Where were we?”

  Mary Kate leaned forward over her typewriter and read: “We of the Galaxy maintain the highest standards of journalistic integrity, and would never stoop to the.” She settled back into her chair and looked at Jack. “You stopped there,” she said.

  Ida Gavin, in a big blue terry-cloth robe, poked and pried around David Levin’s apartment, ignoring the view out the living room windows of charming old nineteenth-century redbrick houses. Much of this living room was lined with bookcases. The furniture, low and pale and bulky, had been chosen by the consultant at Bloomingdale’s to suggest a nonaggressive but self-confident masculinity, but in fact it made the room look as though self-indulgent Munchkins lived here. Ida opened drawers and leafed through magazines and

  looked in cabinets, casual but relentless, and continued to poke and pry when David Levin walked in, one towel wrapped around his waist while he briskly rubbed his hair with another. She was aware of him, but ignored him, and kept on searching.

  David wrapped the second towel around his neck. His expression was satisfied, even smug. “Hello,” he said.

  “You, too,” Ida said. She opened an end table drawer, pushed and prodded with busy fingertips at the book matches, playing cards, pencils, obsolete credit card, and other junk within, and shut that drawer again.

  “What are you doing?” David asked her.

  “I’m nosy,” Ida told him, and turned to give him a challenging stare. “Suppose I’d make a good reporter?”

  “You just did.” David smirked.

  She turned away, ignoring that, and opened another drawer. He crossed the room, put his arms around her from behind, and kissed her hair. She studied the junk in the drawer. “I’m glad you’re not hurt,” David said.

  She shrugged him off, and shut the drawer. “It’ll take a bigger man than you, fella,” she said, and picked up a copy of last week’s Galaxy from the coffee table. “I thought you worked for Trend”

  “I do.”

  She waggled the Galaxy at him. “You read crap like this?”

  Simpering, Davi
d said, “That’s a secret.”

  Ida dropped the paper on the coffee table and considered him, looking him up and down. “You don’t have any secrets from me,” she said.

  Four

  James Taggart had no secrets; at least, none Sara was likely to care about.

  Taggart, the runaway guard, had for a while gone out of Sara’s mind as though he’d never been. She’d been to his house last Tuesday, had gone to work on Wednesday morning planning to find some way to get a look at the man’s employment record, and had been given by a harried Jack the urgent and all-consuming assignment of finding out just exactly where in Massachusetts John Michael Mercer and his Felicia planned to marry. “We need this, Sara,” Jack had said, looking like a man with tapeworms. “Boy Cartwright is on the trail.”

  “But we got Boston.”

  “That was yesterday,” he’d said, and so the race was on, and Taggart was forgotten completely until ten o’clock on Sunday morning, when Sara, home alone for another weekend and already plotting the phone calls she would arrow Massachu- settsward on the morrow, received a phone call from an angry-sounding woman who said her name was Carol Bridges.

  Which meant nothing to Sara at first; she was too deep in Massachusetts to remember much about Florida. But then the woman said, “Well, Miss Taggart? Have you heard from your father?”

  “Oh! No, I haven’t. You neither, huh?”

  “Today is August first,” Carol Bridges said. “I have a chance to rent the house, and I’m taking it. I just wanted you to know that.”

  “Oh, well, I guess ... I guess you’ve been pretty patient. I don’t blame you.”

  “Unless you want to bring the rent up to date?”

  “Oh, I couldn’t afford that. And I don’t know what, uh, what Pop would want, exactly.”

  “Well, if you want his things ” Carol Bridges said, with angry emphasis, “you’ll find them on the curb. You can come get them, or the trash collector can take them away.”